Last Updated on 09/21/2015 by Chris Gampat
The image above is from the modern emulsion of Kodak Portra 400. As you can see, it renders the shadows and the highlights pretty darn well. But it took a long time for film to get to this point.
Film, though still in use with some photographers today, wasn’t always so forgiving. The world originally worked with sepia and then black and white. When color film was developed, it didn’t have such a strong dynamic range according to an educational video recently produced by Vox. So in fact, the details in the faces of people of color (black, brown, etc.) were often very muddled. Indeed, Vox says (quite literally) in their video that it was originally developed for white people–and this problem happened between the 1940s and 1990s.
The changes to film came for many reasons: not only because of how it worked with folks of color but also because when photographing darker objects like wood or Hershey’s Chocolate, it wasn’t easy to pick up the details of the product.
To solve the problem, a team started working with a computer system that balanced darker skin tones and lighter skin tones individually.
Vox’s video does a great job of explaining it all right below.
Get rid of the ads!
Did you enjoy reading this article as much as we enjoyed writing it? There's a way to support us and our reporting, getting ad-free navigation and more as a bonus. Subscribe to us for less than a coffee per month —just $3.99— or take advantage of our yearly subscription with a hefty discount for only $25.- An ad-free experience
- A free mystery box for Lightroom or Capture One
- All the books in our store
- 20% discount on Capture One
- 30% discount on Imalume Photo Theft Protection
- 20% off Herbs and Kettle Tea Company.